America’s Baby Bust: Why No One’s Having Kids Anymore

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America is having fewer babies than ever, and it’s not a blip—it’s a trendline. CDC data show the total fertility rate slipped to fewer than 1.6 children per woman in 2024, below the 2.1 replacement threshold, while the general fertility rate fell to a record low of 53.8 births per 1,000 women ages 15–44 even as total births ticked up about 1% to roughly 3.63 million. In plain terms: more women of childbearing age, a smaller share choosing to give birth, and families starting later or not at all. That’s the quiet story inside the headline number, and it’s reshaping the country’s demographic future.

This low didn’t arrive overnight. Provisional CDC data for 2023 showed a 3% drop in the general fertility rate from 2022 and 3,591,328 births, continuing a long slide that briefly eased only in 2021. Age patterns sharpen the picture: in 2023, rates fell for women 20–39, with a record low for ages 20–24; by 2024, declines concentrated among ages 15–34, steadied at 35–39, and rose for 40–44, signaling an ongoing shift toward later childbearing.

Why the delay—or the decision not to have children at all? Researchers point to later marriage and persistent worries about stability: the cost of housing and childcare, patchy insurance coverage, and uncertainty about work and health. Policymakers have floated fixes from IVF expansion to “baby bonuses,” but demographers like Karen Guzzo argue those measures skirt the larger structural needs that shape family decisions day to day.

Falling below replacement doesn’t mean immediate decline, but it does mean the U.S. is joining Europe’s demographic math: slower growth, older populations, and greater dependence on immigration and productivity gains to sustain dynamism. The U.S. sits closer to France than to Spain or Italy, but the direction is familiar—fewer than two kids per woman and a culture of later births—while some experts note that, for now, births still outnumber deaths and the population is still growing.

If the goal is to make family formation feel less like a high-wire act, the levers are straightforward but politically hard: affordable childcare, paid leave, predictable schedules, accessible housing, lower out-of-pocket healthcare burdens, and paths to stable, decently paid work. Absent those foundations, one-off incentives are more message than material help, which is why many analysts doubt they’ll move the needle in a lasting way. The headline number will change when the everyday math of raising a child feels less precarious—and that’s a policy choice as much as a personal one.